


Wordpicture: Sam Carter

by Deannie



Series: Wordpictures [2]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-07-15
Updated: 2003-07-15
Packaged: 2017-12-19 06:48:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/880704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She didn't know what she would have become<br/>if she hadn't joined the Stargate project.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wordpicture: Sam Carter

Sam Carter sighed in exhaustion, her hands deep in the guts of an alien ship. Colonel O'Neill and Daniel were on PX9 432, waiting for rescue from a ship that shouldn't have been anything but space junk at this point. Teal'c was deep in Kel'no'reem, with some impressive wounds, and Sam hoped the colonel and Daniel wouldn't have any that matched. And yet, amid the chaos and the worry, part of her mind was relaxed--even happy.  


This was why she stayed.  


Her father had always just assumed his kids would go military, but after her mother's death, Sam had seriously doubted her own wisdom in choosing the Air Force Academy over Harvard, Yale, and MIT. Now, as she struggled to correct the damage to the battered old cargo transport, she realized that all of her life had been leading to this.  


Science was a matter of knowledge, after all--as much about what you didn't know as what you did. And sitting here, divining the cause of the damage to an engine that, three years ago, she could never have conceived the existence of, she realized with a thrill in her gut that what she didn't know could likely fill a number of Ancients' repositories.  


And it was amazing! And terrifying and humbling and frustrating. And she honestly wouldn't have it any other way.  


The knowledge she lacked had given her back her father--given her a whole new family, in fact--and it had given her a chance to make the kind of difference that mere Earth-based scientists would never know about. And quite probably would never want to. Her recent book on "theoretical" wormhole physics had been derided by some as a lark--a "what if" akin to the many pop cult books on what aliens would look like or on how man could travel faster than the speed of light.  


She smiled to herself. As Colonel O'Neill might say: "It doesn't mean they weren't right." Having met some fairly outrageous aliens and traveled at superluminal speeds, Sam would have been one of the first to agree with him.  


God, it was all so incredible! Even the danger and the fear and the pain (and wasn't there just a little too much of _that_ to go around?) were exhilarating. Sometimes she tried to picture herself stuck on Earth, with a classroom full of closed minds before her, trying desperately to tout mere theories that were seen as absolutes in the insular scientific community...  


She couldn't do it. She didn't know what she would have become if she hadn't joined the Stargate project--  


"Step on it, Sam! We're running out of time!"  


Her father's voice blaring over the intercom made her smile. Among all the things she didn't know, there was one thing she _did_ : Here among the stars, she was needed.  


She drove the last crystal home, sighing with contentment this time, as the hyperdrive's panel lit up reassuringly.  


"It's in, Dad," she called out, standing stiffly and rubbing her hands on her pantlegs. "Let's get out of here!"  


After all, her teammates needed her.

* * *  
The End


End file.
